$50 Scratch-Offs Help Boost Sluggish Lottery Sales

For all the naysayers who couldn’t imagine folks gambling on $50 on a single lottery ticket….Turns out, the state is making out like a bandit on its high-priced $130 Million Spectacular. Players have forked over close to $49 million dollars in the game’s first six weeks. Or $1.2 million a day.

Robust sales of the $50 game, amongst the priciest in the nation, are reversing what had been declining overall lottery sales. Total sales this year for all games are down 2.3 percent over last year, but they were down nearly 5 percent before the $50 game was introduced, on May 7. “The $50 game has had a definite impact on instant and overall sales,” Texas Lottery Commission projects manager Robert Tirloni told agency commissioners at their monthly meeting this morning.

The $50 game now accounts for 2 percent of all scratch-off sales. The most popular games are those selling for $5. They accounted for nearly 28 percent of all scratch-off sales, followed by the $2 tickets (20 percent of all scratch-off sales) and the $10 tickets (14 percent of all scratch-off sales).